Aaa- AAA!!! No, no no NO- Maria flew up high, and materialized, and while she fell, she hurriedly grabbed one of her precious plastic explosives from her bag. She lobbed it into the darkness away from Lux to see if it did goddamn anything, detonating before hitting the ground in a splash of water beside the team. She immediately rematerialized, and it took like, one second of seeing Siren do her Shit, to have very strong feelings about it.

”... Diamante, up front with me!”

She swung around, hefting the hammer she took earlier at Don. Give him a little space between him and these monsters, and still make use of him. She drew her sword in the same spin, and took Siren’s place up front, trying to stave back the nightmare flood and press forward.

The monster Emily hit with a healing spell seemed to morph into an even larger, tumorous, terrifying monster of tentacles, eyes, spikes, teeth, and jutting bones. It was probably the size of a semi-truck cab, and lumbered towards her, shrieking and howling.

Maria flew down to the ground level, chucked a hammer at Diamante, and started fending off monsters with her sword. It wasn't very effective. They were too solid to be sliced right through, yet too...tough and fluid to be harmed by her strikes. It took all she could do to deflect their attacks. Diamante was a bit more effective, smashing away numerous monsters with his hammer. Even so, none of the monsters he struck seemed to die. They just kept reforming, getting up, and continuing the fight.

Lux fired her scepter down at the all-consuming void in the roof, firing and successfully burning her legs down to the bone! The maw was unharmed. At that point, Yasmine jumped from the battle up to the roof, climbing up and slashing at the horrible void with her spear. It cut right through, causing the entire void to wither and disappear, leaving only an incredibly injured Lux. She fell down, her legs useless after being so thoroughly burned. Fortunately, the Dragonfly was on hand, and quickly picked up her sister AND Yasmine. She flew them both down to Dr. Emily, dropping Yasmine to continue her fighting while she brandished Lex at the doctor.

"Heal her!" she shouted frantically.

At the same time, the monsters were beginning to thicken into a veritable formation of horrors, pushing their assault wherever they could. Athena and Adrasteia had tightened ranks, forming a shield wall of two as they fought off everything they could. Athena's spear kept them at a distance, while their shields bashed back any that got too close.

The Demon and Nick had been pushed back to the main group, where they were still fighting off whatever they could with fire, sword, and gun. Bevill had suffered numerous cuts during his fight, but seemed unperturbed, continuing his offensive deep into their ranks with his cane.

Solar Flare kept firing his assault rifle, running low on ammo, while Chalchi raised water barriers to hold back enemies wherever the fighting was thickest.

Yasmine dropped onto the street where Dragonfly dumped her and took stock. Sheer force seemed to be having some effect - at least Chalchi's water, Diamante's hammer, Athena's shield and Bevill's spear were keeping the things at bay - but in terms of offense they were pretty screwed and the monsters just kept on coming. She closed her eyes for a second and tried to hysterically yell to the ghosts for help.

We're getting thrashed out here! Is there any kind of, I dunno, arsenal you guys had that might still be intact?! Anything that'd do some real damage like the Spear, or any other weakness they might have? What about an escape route, can they fly? Not everyone here could, but shit, maybe some of them could make it out of this. Maybe she didn't just lead everyone to their doom. We have healing and defense so we're holding up, but...

Right, healing. On that note! She opened her eyes and found herself locked on that gigantic, car sized, jagged disgusting thing barreling towards Doctor Emily. With a brief thought for the last hopes of her white costume, not to mention her life, Siren charged, avoiding other monsters if she could, and tried to impale the giant monster right through its stupid head/body/whatever-that-big-main-bit-was. If she survived, the lizards would hopefully answer!

She retreated to the doc to grab her shrine and get the rebar she stashed away earlier, and returned. She then like, traded the rebar for the hammer, figuring Diamante would have an easier time using it with his Very Tough Hands, and got to smacking monsters out of the way. Fuck. They needed to MOVE-

”Hey, how ‘bout a game plan? Chalchi, Nick, Demon, let’s get a water path toward where we’re going. Siren-AA- When you’re done, shit- get ready to rip these things apart in your element, fliers prep for picking stragglers off, everyone else tighten up to keep them off our ass and keep moving forward!”

She’d watch Siren??? In case??? She needed help with that??? But keep smacking fuckers.

At the same time, Yasmine charged forward, deflecting a tentacle strike from the giant eldritch horror before stabbing into it. An explosion of black ooze covered her, everything around her, and everything behind her as she sliced directly into the abomination. At that point, it exploded, coating the entire alley in the disgusting bile.

Gross.

"We had an armory down here, though I wouldn't count on it still being intact after so many years," the lizardmen said. [b]"Blunt force works well at keeping them away, as does overwhelming, pure, cold logical sanity. Rather hard to get somebody on that level, though, let alone getting them to focus when surrounded by horrors. The Spear of Oceanus is your best bet at keeping them away."[/i]

The team pressed on, with Nick and the Demon summoning vast quantities of water for Chalchi to use in smashing things. Adrasteia and Athena covered the flanks with their shields while Diamante stood near the center smashing anything that came near. The Blue Armored Lady had taken up a position with the group, and was using her arrows as best she could. They still weren't very effective.

Finally, Bevill had taken up the rear guard, and was smashing away horrors left and right as the group moved on.

The group emerged from the alley covered in ooze and chased by horrors. Down the main street, atop a set of stairs, was the pyramid they sought!

"I'm fine," she reassured her sister, voice sounding a bit flat. She got up and manifested a warhammer and a shield for her sister. "Don't use your hands. Not sure how well those will work."

Right.... She tried to keep the light beam trained on Solar Flare, using her shroud to hold it more than her hands. First she'd see how effective her sword was against these things...if it went poorly, she'd manifest a shield and hammer and try to add to the defensive wall.

Newly armed with a hardlight hammer, the Dragonfly smashed...a whole two things with it before it shattered. Since hardlight illusions weren't THAT hard, and they were just about weightless, so they didn't really have any heft. Blunt hardlight weapons weren't the best.

Lex's sword cut through them easily, though they reformed just as quickly. The fuckers.

All in all, the entire team kept fighting their way up towards the pyramid, though they found themselves getting more and more bogged down by heavy fighting. At the top of the steps, just outside the entrance, their path was suddenly blocked by a gigantic centipede-snake looking semi-skeletal horror that smashed its way through the ground. It shrieked at them, being around fifty feet long.

"YOU WILL SURRENDER THE SPEAR. OR YOU WILL DIE!" shouted the voice in their heads.

If the hard-light hammers kept her sister from having to touch those nasty things, they were doing their job. She kept manifesting new ones for her.

She tried to keep Solar Flare in a beam as she futilely sliced the monsters. They didn't stop working, but there wasn't much else to try and do to them. She briefly assessed the new monster... and figured her chances against it were likely what they were against the hordes of abominations. Not great. "Go through it." She suggested/ordered Siren, the only one making a dent in these things.

Oh God, they kept getting bigger. That wasn’t it, was it? The lord itself? She had no idea what ancient god-monsters looked like. “I’ll try, but like... I guess back me up? And Doctor, uh... I might need you in a sec.”

Yasmine did what she does and tried to stab the thing! Hopefully in the front legs, so it’d be off balance! Oh shit she was going to die!

As Siren charged the giant centipede, Maria flew up onto its back in a cloud of mist, planting a C4 charge as numerous spikes came out, impaling her hands and legs. Nevertheless, she managed to pull back, detonating the charges. These blew a sizable hole in the creature, causing it to stumble as it reconstituted itself. Meanwhile, Solar Flare was sending uneven energy blasts into the thing's face. Chalchi followed this up with water strikes to its lower portions, knocking its unsteady frame off balance and sending it to the ground.

Athena and Adrasteia were providing cover to Siren, preventing the horrors from overwhelming Siren as she delivered the killing blow to the beast.

At this point, Siren reached its face, and without hesitation managed to ram her spear into it. An eruption of spikes, bone shards, and acid flew out of it, peppering her with cuts, slices, and burns. Nevertheless, the thing died, as its many compatriots had.

As Dr. Emily stood back, a number of horrors overran Bevill in the rear and began making their way towards her. Fortunately for her survival, Don Diamante broke ranks from the side and charged in, holding them back with numerous punches and rebar strikes. Unfortunately for him, they responded with lethal force, impaling him with countless spikes and driving him to the ground. He kept fighting, throwing them off and doing his best to keep them back from the healer. Still, he wasn't looking good.

Nick and the Demon, meanwhile, did their best to cover Emily's flanks with fire. If Emily fell, the entire rear would fall, and the front fighters would be overwhelmed. The blue armored lady, meanwhile, had disappeared. The Dragonfly was flying around, doing her best to keep the enemy distracted with blows from the weak light hammer, and Lux was continuing her onslaught with the sword.

Holy shit this was bad. And yet, Emily remained resolute. She was a DOCTOR. Keeping people alive was her JOB. And she was GOING TO DO HER FUCKING JOB.

Emily, not able to get close to Diamante safely, concentrated a ranged beam of health on him instead! With her other hand, she tried to get Bevill too, if she could. If not... Well, dammit, she healed everyone she could get to! She had to! THIS IS WHAT SHE DOES.

Siren was filthy and dripping blood and horror-gunk and... ew, not that she was sad it was gone, but why did things keep exploding on her today. She'd try to keep the front moving, letting the rest of the team focus on securing the rear. "We're so close! Doctor, are you okay? Should we fly her out or something?"

Right, if the Greeks and Siren were up front, and the thing- oww- was down, she could- oh shit!

Maria wasn’t sure how her legs were doing after that to be honest? But she was going to try and fly to Diamante, aiding he and the doctor’s retreat, batting these fuckers back with her hammer. If her legs didn’t want to let her uhh, stand, then she’d just keep having to switch between mist and meat, appearing to slam down and dissapate before she could touch ground and collapse.

Emily sent a healing beam back to Diamante, prolonging his life as he was buried beneath stabbing and slashing horrors. Meanwhile, Maria turned into mist and flew back, landing on her super injured legs and swinging her hammer as best she could. It wasn't particularly effective, but it distracted a few of them. Solar Flare then flew overhead, blasting a number of them off of Diamante before going further, shooting solar blast after solar blast into the hordes as Lux powered him with her scepter.

Bevill was nowhere to be seen. However, a few seconds later, a hand clutching a cane emerged from the hordes of horrors. Taking the hint, Solar Flare flew in low, blasting horrors away before grabbing Bevill out of the horde. He appeared...completely uninjured aside from a completely tattered suit, dishelved hair, and a lot of ooze and muck all over him. He was dropped near Emily and immediately rejoined the fight, fortunately still having his wooden chest slung over his shoulder.

Diamante managed to crawl out from under the horde with Maria and Solar Flare's assistance and was dragged, almost in pieces, back to Dr. Emily.

Meanwhile, Siren looked inside the pyramid, finding it almost empty. It seemed that all the horrors had been trying to stop them from gaining entrance, rather than guarding the inside. A series of two meter wide steps led up to the top of the pyramid, where a hole sat for her staff. Beneath the steps, reaching down for miles, was a ton of colossal machinery stretching down into the earth.

Falling from the steps would likely lead to a painful death. Athena and Adrasteia were standing by, ready to back up Siren if she wanted to run for it.

Lux helped THIN THE HORDE as they waited for Emily to heal and everyone to fall back to the pyramid. Once she saw the situation inside, she sent Dragonfly an illusion in addition to a new hammer when her current one broke. "go help siren up" it read, in neon block print letters. Possibly, they were all uppercase instead of lowercase. It was one of those ambiguous fonts.

Emily healed Maria and began the process of healing Diamante. The good news was that she COULD heal Diamante, with the bad news being that it’d take longer than usual. His diamond flesh was challenging to mend.

Athena and Adrasteia were about to provide cover to Siren yet again, but this was halted by the Dragonfly, who lifted Siren up and carried her through the air to the top of the interior pyramid of steps. There, Siren was dropped at the top. The spear hole was right there, and the spear was pushing her towards it with great urgency. With a bit of hesitation, Siren jammed her spear inside.

Immediately, the ground began to vibrate as the enormous machinery below began to work. A massive surge of water could be heard, and if one looked over the edge, they could see the massive terraforming machinery working as intended after the many years.

Texas was being flooded.

”I could have helped you!” boomed the godly voice in their minds. ”Yet you rely on my slain foes and their machines instead. You will not escape this place.”

W-wOAH ok! That was! Well, it should have been weirder, was all Maria was thinking. Not like she hadn’t been magically healed before, but this was probably a NICER experience than any of that. Plus, didn’t even have to kill someone for this. Sweet? ”Thanks Doc!”

She started batting them back a LITTLE more effectively then, and looked back at Chalchi. ”Time to get I think, let’s boost everybody out of here!” Like. Hey. Water ladder had worked for her before, and these things weren’t flying YET.

Maria would call Fliers to grab Diamante (since she assumed he was a bit heavy for that,) and then... did a headcount...

”BLUE LADY! LOCATION!” She like, doubled the helmet voice with Divine voice so it would be a super loud kinda thing? Hopefully enough??? To reach her if she wasn’t dead??? Shit.

Lex started to try and calculate what all the flyers could carry. She could carry....not much more than her own weight. Just not enough lift. Sydney could carry....a lot? Solar Flare... could at least lift Bevill. He looked heavy. Hm.

"I could carve an exit anywhere. But it will be faster to take the elevator." They were pretty deep, weren't they?

Siren pulled her spear out of the machinery then took Dragonfly's proffered hand. The machinery below them was shaking off its dust and grinding to life, and she didn't fancy staying balanced on the way back if she didn't have to. Especially considering she just flooded Texas.

Holy shit she just flooded Texas. Desert Rainwalk was about to become an island. She'd actually done it.

Fuuuuuuck.

"I'll be back for you," she muttered to the voice. Once Dragonfly dropped her back on the ground, she tried to fight through the exhaustion and keep any monsters away from Emily. "What about flying? Can we fly her out of here?!"

She didn't have much hope but she asked the lizards if there were any other elevators, too. If anything happened to Emily they were properly dead.

...Woah. "Not bad." Feathery wings were always a good look, in her opinion. Though they'd probably hurt if they got hit--they looked kind of flesh and blood rather than magic. "Stay behind Dragonfly. And a bit to one side. You'll feel the low pressure zone in flight. Solar Flare. Guard Dragonfly." She ordered, putting away her sword and manifesting her own wings! Time to fuckin' book it.

Everybody who could not fly jumped onto the Dragonfly, including the blue armored lady, who ziplined on down with startling speed!

Then the Dragonfly took off through the air above the cavern city, with Lux and Maria following along. Emily followed behind, uneasily flying along with her new wings! They reached the elevator with a horde of eldritch horrors on their heels, and everybody quickly began rushing inside.

"You have won a battle, but you will not escape for long. Flee, little worms..."

Siren presumably activated the elevator with her spear, and the elevator closed and began its rise to the surface.

"That was...disgusting," Lex said, taking a seat on the goddamn ground, and promptly trying everything she could think of to methodically rub the nasty goo and/or her skin off. "Get rid of that thing once we deal with the robots, Siren."

"Yeah, I'll be seeing you again," Siren panted in response to the telepathic voice, then slid to the floor and started trying to wipe slime off her dirty face with an even dirtier sleeve. "That was... eugh, I can't believe that's been under Rainwalk this whole time. I thought the nastiest muck in this town was like, the diner coffee. I'll go back for it." Assuming they survived this - first things first.

She had quite a few questions for the spirits in the spear, but for now just asked about the creatures they'd mentioned that could help her gill-free friends. Although apparently everyone could fly now? "Man, Doctor, those are so cool! Like, do you always have them, or do they only come out when you need them? How much can you carry? Do you have to condition your feathers?" She was rambling a little - wings seemed like a nicer thing to think about than what they'd just done.

Which was... fought their way past an elder god to activate a device that was currently in the process of flooding her home state.

"Um, I don't really know what it is, to be totally honest. I kinda found it in the ruins. I guess it was what the folks that built that city used to give to their protectors?" Siren shrugged helplessly at Lux and Maria. "I was gonna try to find out more, but then robots happened, and... you know."

"Whatever its made of, I guess it wasn't enough to keep that thing out." She shuddered. "Not back then, anyways." Once all this was over she'd see how round two would shake out.

Emily looked at Siren and kinda shrugged. "I don't know the answer to any of that?? They just kind of appeared out of nowhere just now. I guess it's related to my healing powers, but... how? I don't know."